Explore the wilderness with us… Within the next 10-15 years we will see the last-remaining wilderness area on earth dominated by the demands of growing human populations and undermined by accelerated climate change. When the earth’s last wild places are gone, all we will have are fenced off protected areas dependent on constant intervention to persist and marginalized by the demands of sustained development in emerging markets. Guides, rangers, researchers, ecotourists, photographers, artists and conservationists around the world apply themselves everyday to sharing, studying, photographing, writing about, protecting, conserving and celebrating the “wild” with their guests, co-workers, colleagues, and local communities. These amazing photographs are a window into their world, a world where the lions, elephants, orangutans and leopards still reign supreme and we can dream of that perfect morning in the wilderness…

The Bush Boyes and Ranger Diaries have teamed up to bring you the “Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness”. These stunning photographs are selected from hundreds of submissions and are intended to bring the beauty, freedom and splendor of the wilderness to as many people as possible around the world. Please submit your best photographs from the wildest places to the Ranger Diaries wall (www.facebook.com/rangerdiaries) and stand a chance of being featured in the “Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness” published each week. This initiative is all about SHARING and CARING about wild places. Please “Like” this blog post and share this link with as many people as possible… So begins the “Ranger Revolution”… Anyone can be an “honorary ranger” if they share and care about the wilderness, stimulating positive change for wild places around the world… Join the revolution now!

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” (Henry David Thoreau)

“I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.” (Edward Abbey)

“African wild cat” by guide Amy Attenborough of AndBeyond Ngala http://www.rangerdiaries.com/photos/view-photos.html?id=1713 “An unusual sighting of an African wild cat during the day. Typically these animals are nocturnal and rather skittish but this one allowed us to watch it for about five minutes before strolling off into the bush.” (Amy Attenborough)

“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be – will be – a human zoo. A high-tech slum.” (Edward Abbey)

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.” (Edward Abbey)

“Morning Sip” by guide Jaques Pierre Joubert at AndBeyond Kirkman’s Camp http://www.rangerdiaries.com/photos/view-photos.html?id=1786 “This young male leopard did me a massive favour by looking right up at me while having a drink on a beautiful winter’s morning in the Sands.” (Jaques Pierre Joubert)

“In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.” (Charles Lindbergh)

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” (Rachel Carson)

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” (Crowfoot (Blackfoot))

“This is Africa” by guide Edward Peach of Ivory Tree Lodge, Pilanesberg http://www.rangerdiaries.com/photos/view-photos.html?id=1853 “Sun setting in the Pilanesberg with a huge fire in the west can always result in beautiful settings with extra red colours, but add some elephants walking front of that…. well thats just special!” (Edward Peach)

“Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.” (Aldo Leopold)

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” (John Muir)

“Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.” (Chief Seattle (Suquamish))

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (Henry David Thoreau)